Cashback bonus 2025 update

We have had a tough trading year. Our turnover remains strong at £372.8m, but we are operating in several challenging markets.

We have seen numerous external costs go up, including National Living Wage and National Insurance contributions, which added £4.6m to our personnel costs. Inflation and the plastic packaging tax have also impacted.

Another challenge was the supply issues we faced after the Co-op Group – which leads our Buying Group – was targeted in a cyber-attack.

It means our trading surplus is down by over half, to £5m. Our underlying measure of profit, known as EBITDA, was also reduced by 25% this year.

As a result, we are not paying a cashback bonus to our members this year, though we will be maintaining the 1% cashback on purchases. This year-round benefit totalled £1.6m this year.

Find out more about our financial results here.

We pay 1% of cashback on purchases throughout the year and provide members with a range of offers to help them boost their cashback.

We have shared £1.6m with our members this financial year in this way, an average of £5.28 per member.

There is now a total of £4.5m on our members’ dividend cards, which they can spend as full or part payment in any of our outlets.

When we undertook a members’ survey in 2025, 70% of members said they rank a reward every time they shop as the most important benefit.

Last year, the cashback bonus was an average of an extra £4.71 per member.

We know not receiving a bonus will be disappointing for members but there are lots of other benefits they will continue to receive.

This includes the 1% cashback on purchases all year round, invites to events, exclusive offers for local businesses, and free fruit for children linked to members’ accounts. We have also been introducing new mechanisms to enable members to boost their cashback, which are proving popular, and we hope this will help to grow our membership and increase footfall too.

In previous years, our trading surplus has been higher, so we have been able to share larger sums of cashback with members.

As our profit drops, we also must reduce the amount of cashback we distribute.

One of the measures we look at is the proportion of surplus which is being spent on cashback.

In 2021, that was 19%. But in recent years, that proportion has risen and it has reached 60% this financial year, as the total also includes the cashback bonus we paid in December 2024.

To ensure we can invest in growth and long-term sustainability, and to continue to support our communities and our 2,900 colleagues, we need to rebalance the amount we give out in cashback.

We serve our members and their communities, and we also employ around 2,900 local people. We aim to share our surplus in a fair way.

We have a wide-ranging community support programme which we know is important to lots of local people.

This includes our Community Champions scheme – which sees Lincolnshire Co-op donate to a good cause every time a member shops with us. This saw £453,570 shared between 263 groups this year.

We also run 36 Community Cuppas, 92 Wellbeing Walks and have numerous sponsorships of local facilities and organisations, including local football clubs, and community facilities like the new Horizon Youth Zone in Grimsby.

We serve our members and their communities, and we also employ around 2,900 local people. We aim to share our profits in a fair way.

Our colleagues are working tremendously hard in a tough trading environment, and have been adjusting to changes we need to grow our business to make sure we are sustainable in the long-term.

As a result, in December, we will be giving our eligible colleagues a profit share bonus which equates to 43% of a weekly wage.

Though we haven’t met the target we set for EBITDA - our trading profit metric - the Board of Directors has agreed to an exception this year because of the impact of the Co-op Group’s cyber-attack.

Managers are not eligible for that profit share. We have a managers’ bonus scheme which is only paid if certain financial targets and performance targets are met. This financial year, to meet that target, we need to receive insurance monies covering the supply issues we faced following the Co-op Group’s cyber-attack. If we can recover sufficient funds, we aim to share a bonus in February 2026, but this is not guaranteed.

We need to invest in our business to make sure we can grow and be sustainable in the long-term. We have future plans to support healthcare and housing locally, which are priority needs for our area.

We are making major investments in our systems and in IT, which will modernise our processes and make us more efficient. We’re also investing in new outlets which benefit the community and help us increase turnover.

These have included our Health Hub in Birchwood, which is a new model for pharmacy services, our flagship funeral branch in Horncastle, a new look travel branch in Louth, and new food stores in Scartho and Coates, as well as major investment in refits of our existing services.

The reduced surplus and the impact it would have on the cashback bonus was mentioned in our half year members’ report, which is on our website.

We also talked about this with members at our Half Year Members’ Meeting, which was attended by 861 members in-person and online.

Our Board of Directors make the final decision. The Board ratified our financial results and signed off the annual report in mid-November. You can read the annual report and find out more about our financial results here.

226,782 members will receive an email on Monday 24th November. Information will also be in our annual report - which you can find
here. We will also cover it at our Annual Members’ Meeting on December 9th, the press, and our website.

In our half year report and half year members meeting, we shared that we would be unable to pay a member cashback bonus this year. Member cashback bonus is reliant on our trading surplus, which has reduced this financial year.

However, our financial results and year-end annual report needed to be signed off by our Board of Directors and our auditors before we shared the news more widely.

We will share the news via an email to 226,782 members, in the press, on our website, on social media, in our annual report on Monday 24th November, and will share more at our Annual Members’ Meeting on Tuesday 9th December.

The member cashback bonus is based on the amount of cashback members have earned on purchases made throughout the year.

However, though members receive cashback throughout the year on purchases in travel and funeral branches, those transactions do not contribute to cashback bonus.